Prerequisites for Agility, T4AT 02-12-2021

Prerequisites for Agility 02.12.2021
©2021 SensibleAgility Pathfinder GmbH 1
Sensible
Agility
Prerequisites
for Agility
Getting the starting line-up right
Wolfgang Hilpert
#prereqagility
Sensible
Agility
www.sensibleagility.com DHBW – WS2021/22 – Wolfgang Hilpert
ABOUT WOLFGANG
Product & Technology
EXECUTIVE advisor &
Enterprise Agile
Transition coach
25 years of Product &
Engineering leadership
experience in various
CTO, CPO & Head of
Engineering roles
Led organizations that
shipped products at
IBM, Microsoft, SAP,
Nemetschek, Sophos, HERE
Transformative Leader,
drove significant product
innovation and quality
improvements
time and again
Passionate practitioner and
perpetual student of
Lean & Agile;
championed several
organization’s agile
transformations
Guest Lecturer
@ Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative
State University, Mannheim &
@ Graduate School Rhein-Neckar,
Ludwigshafen
on Digital Transformation &
Agile Way of Working
Wolfgang Hilpert
Founder of
Sensible Agility
De-Risking Your Agile Transformation
https://SensibleAgility.com
wolfgang@sensibleagility.com
/in/whilpert/
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www.sensibleagility.com
Various reasons for a
large-scale agile
transformation failure
• Lack of leadership support
• Lack of commitment at every level of the organization
• Incorrect application of popular agile methodologies
• A lack of understanding of which methodology will suit
your organization
• Rushing the transformation process.
Why do we want to go Agile?
Leadership and workers talking past each other
Pretty much everyone else
“We want the leadership to
understand and become Agile.“
Leadership
“I just need you to meet our waterfall
numbers faster and cheaper.“
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What can go wrong on your Agile Journey?
Wolfgang’s take:
“I have never seen a
long-term successful
Agile transformation
using
Waterfall leadership.”
The
SAME OLD
Thinking
The
SAME OLD
Results
Irony:
Adopting Agile
Using a
Waterfall
Approach
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Common Impediments to Change
From Pre-Requisites Towards Long-lasting
Commitment to Change
Alignment
Guide for
leadership
on what is
coming
Invite broad
leadership
engagement
Affirm deep
commitment
to change
Pre-requisites
On-going
Commit-
ment
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Alignment
Guide for
leadership
on what is
coming
Invite broad
leadership
engagement
Affirm deep
commitment
to change
Pre-requisites
On-going
Commit-
ment
Getting the starting line-up right
Alignment enables Autonomy
Enterprise alignment on principles, values and practices enables team autonomy
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Four Views of Change
Behaviors
• How will our day-to-
day mindset,
behaviors and culture
change?
Actions
• What will we do
differently to make the
change happen?
Change theory
• What is the theory
behind the approach?
Outcomes
• What outcomes will we
get and how will we
know when we have
achieved them?
WHY WHAT
WHO
HOW
?
Outcomes
• What outcomes will we
get and how will we
know when we have
achieved them?
WHY WHAT
WHO
HOW
?
Adaptability and responsiveness
Customer (citizen) focus
Employee focus
Quality
Cost and burnout
Value
Risk
Innovation
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Why Agile?
Targeted Outcomes
• increased efficiency, effectiveness and
sustainability
• shorter time-to-market,
• improved quality,
• happier customers by delivering real customer
value,
• faster ROI, financially healthy business and
• satisfied employees resulting in an engaged
workforce
• Organization recognized for adding value by your
community
Customer Value
Delivery
Employee
Engagement
Financial health
More effective
Value creation
Change theory
• What is the theory
behind the approach?
WHY WHAT
WHO
HOW
? Duration and scale of changes
Iterative approach
Leadership behavior
Cultural change
Structures and Operating
model
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Stages on Path to Agility
Superficial Agility
Customer value? What
customer?
Going through the
motions
Work is –partially – visible
Silo development
Lots of carry over
No (strong) PO / SM
No focus on systematic
improvement
Adopting Agility
Meaningful
Retrospectives
Scrum Master is coaching
Work estimated &
velocity being measured
Swarming and cross-
training starting
Team identity established
Predictable Agility
Carryover is limited
Focused teams – limiting
WIP
Constant team backlog
refinement
Break down work and
swarm
Entire cross-functional
team shows ownership
Persistent Agility
Lead time significantly
reduced
Able to respond to new
high priority and deliver
quickly
Leadership focus on
optimizing the whole
Urgently resolve
organizational
impediments
Test automation, CI/CD,
DevOps in action
Expected Duration: Multiple years
Duration and scale of changes
Fast Feedback Cycles!
Fail fast, learn fast! - Or: ship all the time
- Eric Ries, Author, Lean Start-up
“The only way to win is to learn faster
than everyone else.”
Transformation
Goals
Product
Goals
Why deliver your agile transformation
any other way than your products?
Iterative approach
Keep iterating
until you have
the confidence
that you‘ve got
it right.
Make
improvements.
Ship it again.
Observe. Learn.
Get your
delivery out to
enough people
that can show
you where
you‘ve got it
wrong.
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Failure is
an option!
Everyone
fails.
Duncan Maddox https://www.linkedin.com/posts/scrum-duncan_agile-scrum-failfast-activity-6871432697047199744-SwyJ
The Obstacle is the Way - Lean Analogy
Be prepared to discover things that make you feel uncomfortable
Manufacturing
• Inventory hides problems as water in a lake
hides obstacle, e.g., rocks
• Reducing inventory ~ “lowering the water
level”
→ Makes obstacles visible
→ Uncovers opportunities to improve
Software Engineering
• Work in progress, partially done work
frequently contains problems
• Shorter iterations / Scrum sprint length:
show progress, shorten feedback cycle
increase speed of learning
→ Encourages team to recognize impediments
earlier and more easily
Transformation Product
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New Leadership focus:
Psychological Safety of teams
enables the fearless
organization
• A high performing system for
(software) delivery needs
excellent engineering practices
• Achieving engineering
excellence depends on fast
feedback, learning &
improvement cycles
• Fast feedback, learning &
improvement cycles depend
on transparency
• Real transparency can only be
achieved when employees feel
psychologically safe!
Business success
Digital Innovation & business value delivery
High performing (engineering) teams
Fast feedback, learning & improvement
Transparency
Psychological Safety
(C)2021 SensibleAgility Pathfinder GmbH
Google spent years studying effective teams
— and one trait stood out: Trust
• Google studied their best teams to
understand what made them great.
• Team "effectiveness" was evaluated by
executives, team leaders, and team
members, plus sales performance.
• The research found what really mattered
was how the team worked together.
• What mattered most: Trust.
• https://www.businessinsider.com/google-spent-years-studying-
effective-teams-this-is-what-they-found-2018-1
• https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/
→ "Psychological safety," (or trust) was the
factor the most effective teams shared.
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Agile Values &
Principles are
the keys to
Leadership
behavior
Leaders understand and embrace
leadership behaviors that support
the desired outcomes
Cultural
change
People based approach –
not process led
• Changing culture
• Becoming an Agile
Enterprise
• The Agile Way of
Working
What do you mean by “Culture”?
Rather than claiming an unactionable
value of “Integrity”, share it as
“Do the right thing – especially if it’s
hard and no one is looking.”
Culture =
Values x Behavior
For a culture to be strong, we must live the values
we espouse - our behaviors.
Anything multiplied by zero is zero. If you have great
values displayed on your walls or screensavers and
don’t live them, your culture is weak.
Anything multiplied by a negative is a negative. If
your actions contradict your stated values, you have
a toxic, deleterious culture.
And - your leaders’ behaviors matter most.
A whisper is a shout.
Simon Sinek
https://simonsinek.com/transform-your-culture/
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https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/12-dimensions-agile-leadership-jonathan-kessel-fell/
Agile Leadership
New Way of Working
Leaders that
serve
Create
Environment,
exemplify
behavior
Skills, Tools and
Techniques
Agile Governance
Control Direction
Inspire People
Provide
Autonomy
Organizational
Barbell for
Stability and
Innovation
New Way of Thinking
Shared Vision
and Passion
Market and
Customer Value
System Thinking
– not Taylorism
Understand
where we are
VUCA / CYNEFIN
Learning as an
Attitude:
Learn from Failures
Continuous
Improvement
Consensus
Leadership behavior
Structures and Operating model
Optimize structure and processes to serve the customer. Remove
silos, hand-offs, reduce cost and delay, deliver high value and quality.
The Functional Organization
optimized for utilization,
not for value delivery
The Resilient Organization
optimized for value delivery and
for time to market
model
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Cross-functional Teams
Characteristics
▪ End-to-end (value) delivery capability of teams
▪ The autonomous pursuit of customer value balanced
with accountability
▪ Longevity of teams is paramount
▪ Abandoning functional silos in favor of focusing on
delivering value
▪ Avoidance of local optimization
▪ A cornerstone on the path to achieving business
agility
model
Behaviors
• How will our day-to-
day mindset,
behaviors and culture
change?
WHY WHAT
WHO
HOW
?
Executive leaders
All leaders
All staff
Customers
Shareholders
Society
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From Shareholder to Customer Focus
A fundamentally different way of
understanding how the world works
Agile
Enterprise
Obsession with delivering
steadily more value to
customers
Work done by small,
increasingly self-organizing
teams, within short cycles,
focused on customer value
delivery
The firm operates as
interacting network of teams
Traditional
Bureaucracy
Focus on making money for
the firm and maximizing
shareholder value
Individuals report to bosses,
who define the roles and
rules of work and
performance criteria
The organization operates as
a top-down hierarchy with
multiple layers and divisions
Mindset Shift:
From Shareholder Value to Customer Value Stream
Employees
Shareholder
Management
adjustment
adjustment
Process
Value stream
Team
Customers
Leadership
adjustment
adjustment
Dr. Bernd Müsig, culture-work.com
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Actions
• What will we do
differently to make the
change happen?
WHY WHAT
WHO
HOW
?
Eco-system
Enable systemic thinking with
inclusive practices
Constraints
Experimentation
Sustainability through rewards
systems
Working on as well as in the
system
Supply
Underpinning Approach
FROM MECHANISTIC TO SOCIAL SYSTEMIC
THINKING
“Most managers are still acting as though
the corporation is a mechanism or an
organism, not a social system.”
WHY FEW ORGANIZATIONS ADOPT SYSTEMS
THINKING:
“We can learn from mistakes if we identify and
correct them. Therefore, organizations and
individuals that never admit to a mistake never
learn anything.”
Transformation Challenges Observed
Three Decades Ago by Prof. Russel Ackoff
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Traditional vs. Systems Thinking
• Linear
• deterministic
• static
• Circular
• non-deterministic
• dynamic
Systems thinking,
a holistic leadership approach
Traditional thinking, a mechanistic
management approach
Trust
For …
With …
Next to …
Against …
each
other
Culture shift is no accident
Mind
Shift
Process /
Structural
Shift
Skill Shift
Behavior
Shift
Culture
Shift
Culture shift as result of several factors – NOT directly a lever to pull!
(Leadership / Mindset) -> (Structure / Process / Behaviours / Skills) -> (Culture Shift)
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Slow Down to Go Faster
If you can’t fly, Run.
If you can’t run, Walk.
If you can’t walk, Crawl.
But, by all means keep moving.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Agile Transformation –
Balance work on with work in the system
Working within the system
Working
within
the system
Transformation
Goals
System of
Transformation
Transformation
backlog
Product
Goals
System of
Delivery
Product backlog
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Pre-requisites for Agility
• Executive leaders
• All leaders
• All staff
• Customers
• Shareholders
• Society
• Eco-system
• Enable systemic thinking
with inclusive practices
• Constraints
• Experimentation
• Sustainability through rewards
systems
• Working on as well as in the system
• Duration and scale of
changes
• Iterative approach
• Leadership behavior
• Cultural change
• Structures and Operating
model
• Adaptability and responsiveness
• Customer (citizen) focus
• Employee focus
• Quality
• Cost and burnout
• Value
• Risk
• Innovation
WHY WHAT
WHO
HOW
?
Pre-requisites
On-going
Commit-
ment
Alignment
Guide for
leadership
on what is
coming
Invite broad
leadership
engagement
Affirm deep
commitment
to change
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Tolerates Agile
practices
Encourage Agile
methods
Actively engages
and immerse
themselves in
Agile Journey
Survivor
Outperformer
Thrasher
Leadership Agility
tolerate
encourage
immerse
Agile “twilight zone”:
→ pretend “optics of agile”,
lack of seriousness about
going agile
Guide for
Leadership on
What is
Coming
Upskill staff with
experiential learning of Agile
and Agile Leadership
responsibilities
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Empty your cup
Leaders need to Unlearn
Hero cult knowing all the answers
24 * 7 - decision making as a service
Can’t show any vulnerability
Leadership
style
Treat people as resources
Optimize for resource utilization
Control people - no tolerance for failure
Industrial age
mindset
Tayloristic task break down – focus on efficiency only
Key activity of Manager role is to direct others
Expect others to simply execute these directives
Organizational
structure
specialization
Functional & skill silos – no interest in flow of value
Territory to defend
“The Backwards Brain Bicycle”
https://youtu.be/MFzDaBzBlL0
7:57
Strive for the perfect plan – detailed and longer term
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7 Key lessons for Agile Leaders
1. Adaptation Over Taylorism
2. Shared Consciousness Over Information Hoarding
3. Networks Over Hierarchies
4. Gardener Over Chess Player
5. Empowered Execution Over Scripted Directions
6. Resilience Over Predictability
7. Fostering Trust Over Tribal Loyalties
Further Insights for Agile Leaders
Stop Starting, Start
Finishing
Slow Down to Go
Faster
Don’t rush advice -
Understand the
problem first
Put People First,
Empower & Trust
Foster Fully
Capable Teams
Experiment, Fail
Early &
Fail Small
Deliver Business
Value,
not just Projects
Servant
Leadership:
“A leader that
serves”
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Servant Leadership
Shift from
managing for
results
To designing
environments that
create results
Agile Leaders loosen the grip to
extend their reach!
Managers still exist;
however, their role changes
• From controlling to enabling
• Helping resolve priorities
• Removing impediments
• Ensuring teams resolve dependencies
on other teams
Steve Jobs:
„It doesn‘t make sense to hire smart
people and tell them what to do; we
hire smart people so they can tell us
what to do.“
Control Is Enhanced By Letting Go Of Control
Reach
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What is the best leadership style?
Command &
Control
➢ Crisis
Servant
leadership
➢ Steady state
Micro-
Management
➢ Training
Anarchy
➢ Creativity
Excitement
Inspire
Encourage
Invite
Request
Direct
Force
Fear
Alignment
Autonomy
Pre-requisites
On-going
Commit-
ment
Alignment
Guide for
leadership
on what is
coming
Invite broad
leadership
engagement
Affirm deep
commitment
to change
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ENGAGEMENT
OF LEADERSHIP
LEVELS
ENGAGEMENT
OF CUSTOMERS
ENGAGEMENT
OF EMPLOYEES
ENGAGEMENT
OF
SHAREHOLDERS
ENGAGEMENT
OF SOCIETY
Invite Broad Engagement
Recommended Practice:
Jointly define a Leadership Alliance
(Working Agreement) for the Agile
Journey
• Set of agreements that a team
makes within itself
• Describes how the team members will
behave and work together
• Created, changed, and enforced by
mutual agreement of the team members
• Not a straight-jacket; may need to
change as new team members join
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Pre-requisites
On-going
Commit-
ment
Alignment
Guide for
leadership
on what is
coming
Invite broad
leadership
engagement
Affirm deep
commitment
to change
Readiness to assess & revise
current processes & procedures
for support of Agile WoW
Bring agile thinking and methods to
all areas of the organization
Iterate;
systemic inspect & adapt with closed
feedback cycles on all levels!
Affirm Deep Commitment to
Change & Relentless Improvement
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Outcome-oriented Change-Approach
Start with thin
horizontal slice
across the
organization
→ Focus on
“value delivery stream“
Engage each layer
for all impacted
parties and
involve them in
the change
“vertical slice” of the
organization:
Individual Contributors,
Teams, Middle Manage-
ment, & Senior Leader-
ship
Align on
Outcomes and
Metrics used to
measure the new
way of working
e.g., OKRs
Define set of
principles guiding
behaviors and the
way we work
e.g., bake quality in at
all steps,
self-organizing teams,
small batches,
customer feedback,
etc.
Create Feedback
Loops from those
doing the work to
those that resolve
systemic impede-
ments
This is called “Manage
Change as Real Work.”
Work on the system of
delivery
Run small
experiments and
focus on quick
wins
You may think big –
but always start small.
Based on
Michael S. McCalla
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaelsmccalla_agiletransformation-businessagility-
agilecoaching-activity-6864192860061782016-KC3h
Commitment
Discontinue patterns such as
• Executives prioritizing features,
assigning and controlling work directly
• Big-upfront planning of long-term
detailed product feature roadmaps
• Maximize capacity and effort, incentivize
output measurements over outcome
• Command & control, driven by meetings
and reports and centralized decision
making
• Intervene to fix all problems
• Encourage establishing and defending
organizational silos
• Encourage Hero cult
• Manage Agile Transformation in
traditional change project management
manner
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Gravity
never
sleeps
Engage in Leadership bootcamp to lead the change
Establish purpose by setting compelling yet credible vision
Apply servant leadership
Make everyone feel safe to provide & receive radical candor & ensure
transparency
Encourage learning from failure and relentless continuous improvement
Empower teams to align decision making power with holder of insights
Focus on outcomes over output
Strive for optimizing the whole
Resolve organizational impediments
Adopt Patterns such as
Alignment
Guide for
leadership
on what is
coming
Invite broad
leadership
engagement
Affirm deep
commitment
to change
Pre-requisites
On-going
Commit-
ment
Checklist(s) available for download:
https://sensibleagility.com/media-events/downloads/
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We are here
GOAL
Agile is the journey
towards the goal
We want to be there
Agile is not the goal
The question is:
“Are we delivering business value to
our customers
effectively, efficiently and
sustainably?”
Agility is a means to an end.
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Thank you!
Wolfgang Hilpert
Sensible Agility
De-Risking Your Agile Transformation
wolfgang@sensibleagility.com
/in/whilpert/
Principled Pragmatic Passionate
https://sensibleagility.com
Questions?
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Prerequisites for Agility, T4AT 02-12-2021

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